Life asked death, "Why do people love me but hate you?"
Death responded, "Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth."
--- Unknown

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Walkin' in the Sunshine

We took advantage of both a day off and the nice weather to take our first walk around the 'hood. We took the camera and snapped a few. We're going to try to make a habit of it (yea, right) as long as the warm, dry weather holds out. It looked like everyone else had the same idea; we had lots of company out on the streets both on foot and on bikes. We had considered digging our bikes out of the storage shed, but figured it would be more trouble than it was worth. I'll probably take a few minutes to air up the tires and what-not after work one night next week in case we get a sudden impulse to do something more physical than walk from the couch to the jellybean jar. It isn't likely, but you never can tell.

Other than that, not much happening today other than dishes, laundry and getting ready for another week of the same ol' grind. Next weekend we will be taking a day-trip down to Boston to hang around a bit and see Lion King. Debbie saw it up in Toronto, but this will be my first time. It will be a nice excuse to get out of the apartment. We're a little concerned about the weather, but even if we get the rain that is predicted, it will still be a nice trip made better by the fact that I don't have to do any of the driving.

I'm gradually working my way through the 1,300+ free songs I grabbed from Amazon last week. The vast majority are worth every penny I paid. A few are worth another listen and a handful or so have already made it to a playlist. I expect to have a few hundred after the first cut and likely less than a hundred when it's all said and done. But at least I get some new tunes without having to spend money.

I generally avoid any news about awards shows because I like what I like and could care less about what some committee thinks about it. No number of ugly statues are going to make me like something or someone that I don't, and vice-versa. But I was intrigued by this:

A dispute over what Cablevision New York should pay for ABC’s free-to-air broadcast signals turned ugly at the stroke of midnight Saturday as the Disney-owned network made good on its threat to cut the signal, putting into doubt whether the cable system’s three million area customers would get to see the Oscars Sunday night....

Should the dispute not be resolved in the 19 hours or so until the Oscars will be seen by everyone else, ABC could and should stream it live. No special video players. No registration. No questions asked: Surf on over to ABC.com and join our Oscars party. Just leave the webcast going after the red-carpet show is over.

ABC could easily do that. They likely won't. For one, the affiliates would scream bloody murder. If the networks start streaming live shows on their web pages, local affiliates become more or less superfluous. They're close to that now; streaming shows (live or otherwise) simultaneous with their broadcast would pound the last couple nails into the local affiliates coffin. I expect the TV industry to look very different in a few years.